


Second Thoughts

by Trismegistus (Lebateleur)



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 03:10:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8040148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/pseuds/Trismegistus
Summary: Dazhis Athmaza made his choice.  And then he made another.





	Second Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExtraPenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/gifts).



Maia would have abdicated right there, when Chavar hinted at the silence and austerity of the worship of the Lady of Falling Stars, had he not known in the cold marrow of his bones that no matter what his chancellor promised—or even believed—Sheveän would have him murdered as soon as she could find someone to do it. 

And with that realization, reality regained its hold on him like a sudden plunge into shockingly cold water. He had no desire for the throne, but for all that care for his subjects was a burden he'd as soon surrender as fight for, there were other factors he must consider.

Idra was a child still and regencies in the Ethuveraz a tradition of disaster, and it was disaster to which Chavar's policies were sure to lead. They still did not know who had blown up the _Wisdom of Choharo_. The last thing the kingdom needed was another new emperor before Winternight, and Maia was not fool enough to believe that Chavar and Sheveän's purge would stop at his removal.

He asked abruptly, “What did you do to our nohecharei?”

“Lieutenant Telimezh is unharmed,” Chavar said. “A soporific cantrip, nothing more.”

“And Dazhis Athmaza?”

Sheveän laughed, as brittle as new ice. “The Mazan'theileian teaches such pretty little magics. But how useful are they, really, against cold steel?” 

Her smile widened and the ice cracked and gave way, plunging Maia into the frigid waters below. 

_At least this treachery did not originate from within thine own household._ It was not much, but it was enough to dampen the sick heat of humiliation and betrayal. His nohecharei had not turned against him. Maia knew they must have sworn their oath as much to the office as to him, but nonetheless, they apparently still found his rule preferable to the alternative. It was not much, but it was something.

 _Pull thyself together._ His thoughts felt unfamiliar and remote, as though they came from someone else's mind entirely. Perhaps Setheris? _But no_ , he thought, _though he would never go so far as to urge thy nohecharei to treason, Setheris would surely exult in your downfall._ It was far easier to imagine the words delivered with Beshelar's perpetual scowl. But then, were Beshelar to learn that Maia's first coherent thought upon finding himself kidnapped was concern for his nohecharei, he was as like to suffer an apoplexy as to offer words of stern advice. 

The thought struck Maia as wildly funny; he could not stop the half-hysterical laughter it occasioned. It was not a reaction either Sheveän or the chancellor had anticipated. It caught them wrong-footed, and for a moment they lost their momentum. 

Seeing it, Maia sobered, and found moreover that he could look Chavar squarely in the face and demand that Idra be brought before them to make clear his opinion on the matter, just as if he had been seated in state in the Untheileian instead of standing bound and nightshirt-clad before his captors. 

It grew yet easier to maintain his sense of detachment when Idra not only disavowed all knowledge of his mother's intentions, but found them clearly horrifying. So here was one more who had not despaired of Maia's rule. He wondered with the same detachment whether Chavar and Sheveän would be forced to kill Idra as well, now that Maia's demand had made him declare his loyalties. But he would never have the chance to find out, for at that moment the Untheileneise Guard kicked down the door. 

The next several minutes passed as though a clock, long left unattended and barely ticking, had suddenly been wound back up. The room descended into a blur of movement and shouting. Maia caught sight of Captain Orthema, eyes blazing behind the mask of Anmura, dashing across the room, sword drawn, before his view was blocked by Beshelar's back as his nohecharis planted himself in front of Maia, torchlight glinting off his own blade. Cala had him by the arms, fingers checking firmly but carefully for injuries even as he backed Maia out of the room. Somewhere, someone—Sheveän's armsman, or one of his own?—screamed. 

But by then they had already guided him back beneath the low stone doorway and on to the stairs. At first their path seemed to trace the same route along which Maia's captors had led him; Maia thought he caught glimpses of damp and rough-hewn walls from behind Beshelar's shoulders. But evidently there was a more straightforward path back, for they soon emerged, by way of some narrow doorway Maia was never quite brave enough to look for again, into one of the main halls of the Alcethmeret, and it was not long before Maia was ensconced back in his chambers.

He returned to find his household in a state of uproar nearly rivaling that from which he'd just escaped. Couriers arrived fast on one another's heels bearing urgent missives demanding to know what was toward or letters declaring their author's unwavering loyalty to Edrehasivar VII, to be delivered with equal urgency. Members of the Guard rushed in and out with orders all seemingly issued simultaneously by individuals operating under vastly different understandings of the situation, and thus frequently dictating that their recipients take contradictory actions. It was enough to tax even Csevet's inimitable powers of organization. 

Eventually the chaos grew too much for Maia to bear, and he demanded with a degree of menacing ill-temper to rival even his cousin's that no additional persons should be given entry to his chambers, that any individual not directly charged with ensuring his safety or faithfully carrying out his wishes depart forthwith, and that everyone remaining first explain to all else present what they understood to have occurred in the proceeding hours and what they meant to do to set it right.

He was thus told the story of how Dazhis, struck down by Sheveän's men, had roused himself from the cold marble floor. He had crawled into Maia's chamber and, finding the emperor gone and Telimezh sprawled insensate upon the ground, managed despite a severe injury to stagger or crawl or fall down three flights of stairs to a pneumatic station, where there was always a girl on duty. 

It was also how he learned that Idra and his sisters had been arrested alongside Chavar and Sheveän, and easily another hour passed before he was able to impress upon the Guard that far from being in league with the conspirators, his nephew had refused to play along with his mother's plot and must be released. 

It was now only a few hours to dawn. Despite his previous command, well-wishers and the merely curious were once again assembling outside the door, testing the Guard's ability to keep them out. Tired and heartsick, Maia instructed Csevet to tell them, and the Corazhas, the Parliament, and all the population of Cetho for that matter, that everything else could wait, and went back to his bed.

Where he was unable to sleep, for the weight of all he had yet to do pressed down upon him, heavier even than the darkness. A new chancellor to be named, a new investigation into the plot against the new emperor to be conducted alongside the old; how to make amends to Idra and his household, for although they had not been his enemies at the evening's start, their arrests might have possibly made them into enemies now. 

Eventually, his mind simply grew too tired to think at all, and he at last drifted into a grey, dreamless sleep. Commotion outside his door launched him from it all too quickly. He threw the covers away and was halfway across the room before he realized that reality had gotten tangled up with dream and memory, and the urgent, half-hushed voices were not those of any abductors. 

“Serenity?” Beshelar too had leapt from his post in the corner at Maia's sudden flight from the bed, sword half-drawn from its scabbard and glinting keenly in the dim light. He sounded not only startled, but unhappy, and Maia knew it must have something to do with the conversation occurring outside his door.

It was clearly not simply some courtier who had managed to talk his way past the guards and into the Alcethmeret; had that been the case Maia had no doubt Beshelar would already have thrown the man out with satisfaction infusing every rule-abiding fiber of his being. Whoever it was speaking with Cala in the antechamber surely had some justification for his presence here—important news, perhaps, or—

Could it concern Dazhis? He vaguely recalled someone—Csevet? Berenar?—announcing that the maza was in the hospital being attended to by an adept of Csaivo. He had meant to inquire further after Dazhis's welfare, and then utterly neglected to do so in the press of all the other matters that had required his immediate attention. The realization occasioned a fresh flush of shame, for truly, had any of it been more important than the man who had saved Maia's life at some cost to his own? 

He turned to Beshelar to find the lieutenant watching him carefully with a guarded look on his features that Maia had not seen before and could not begin to interpret. Steeling himself for his nohecharis's further disapproval, this time likely well-earned, he threw subtlety to the winds and asked directly, “Who is it that waits without?”

“Serenity, we...” Beshelar was at a loss for words. 

Maia was already moving past him to the door. “But wait? Is that not Telimezh?” For a moment, Maia almost thought Beshelar had been about to stop him from opening it. But that was simply his over-worked imagination; Beshelar would never commit such a flagrant violation of protocol, and, Maia realized with another jolt of shame, the lieutenant should not even be on duty in the first place. Little wonder then that Telimezh waited urgently without.

He opened the door to find his second nohecharis in the midst of a heated discussion with Cala, whose normally calm voice had taken on an unhappy and imploring edge. Both he and Cala looked profoundly unhappy. They turned to Maia as one as he stepped into the antechamber, and then Telimezh went down on one knee before Maia had even got a word of greeting out. 

“Serenity, we wish to inform you of our intention to resign.”

“Resign?” Maia echoed stupidly. “But—why?”

As soon as the words left his mouth he knew they'd been the wrong thing to say. Telimezh looked like a whipped dog; it was only too clear he had heard an accusation in Maia's question that he had never intended it to contain. 

“We failed you, Serenity.” Maia opened his mouth to protest that Telimezh had done nothing of the sort, but the lieutenant plowed on unhappily. “We do not wish you to be encumbered with us, nor do we wish to force Dazhis Athmaza to serve alongside a partner whom he can no longer trust to carry out his duty."

“But—there was nothing you could have done. We are told the cantrip was a powerful one. And...”

Maia had intended to say that Dazhis too had been caught unaware by the assault, but caught himself before the words left his lips and compounded the damage he'd already done. That both his nohecharei had ultimately failed to protect him was hardly an argument Telimezh would find reassuring.

And Maia could allow, with the passage of time since the event itself, that there was some justification for Telimezh's remorse. His nohecharei had failed to stop the assault against his person. But, having seen the dedication with which all of them carried out their duties, he was more inclined than others to distrust the common understanding of the Untheileneise Guard as largely ornamental, and the Athmaz'are a halfway home for scholarly eccentrics with magical ability. Sheveän and Chavar must surely have taken as much into account as well.

“...And you have never given us cause to doubt your ability to serve,” he forged on before Telimezh had time to notice his hesitation. “Indeed, you and Dazhis Athmaza both were wounded while protecting us. Had you not put yourselves in harm's way, we doubt we would have been rescued. We are most grateful, for that, and for your service on the whole, and wish it to continue.”

Telimezh looked so stunned someone may as well have hit him with a second cantrip. In his exhaustion, the thought threatened to send Maia into a laughing fit. To forestall it he said, “Please, think on it, at least until Dazhis is well enough recovered that we may ask his thoughts on the matter.” 

It took some moments for Telimezh to overcome his confusion and bend his head in another low bow. “Serenity,” he said thickly, then rose jerkily, as if too distracted to govern the movement of his own limbs as Beshelar and Cala ushered him back out of the door.

That crisis averted, Maia turned to the next of the ever-growing list of matters to which he should have attended all along but had not. “Cala,” he asked, running a tired hand over his eyes. “Is Csevet without? We must see what can be done for you and Lieutenant Beshelar.”

“'What can be done?'” Cala asked, eyebrows arching over the rims of his spectacles. 

Maia dropped his hand and arched his own brows. “We wish first to inquire after Dazhis Athmaza's condition. And, in the event it will be some time before he is recovered enough to resume his duties alongside Lieutenant Telimezh, we intend to make arrangements so that you and Lieutenant Beshelar are also given time to rest and recover.”

He turned to step back into his room, with its bed to which he could take himself any time he so wished. “We imagine Captain Orthema and Sehalis Adremaza will be able to recommend persons to relieve you at intervals.” 

Cala looked stunned, and Beshelar snapped immediately to attention. “Serenity, we are your First Nohecharei. We will remain on duty until Lieutenant Telimezh and Dazhis Athemaza are able to relieve us.” 

“Surely some dispensation can be made,” he said, seating himself at his desk and rubbing aching temples. “After all, you can't expect us to believe that no nohecharis in the history of the Ethuveras has never taken ill while on duty, or—“ 

“We will remain on duty until Lieutenant Telimezh and Dazhis Athmaza are able to relieve us,” Beshelar said again in the same flat voice.

“—Or for some other reason been rendered unable to complete his shift.”

“—on duty until Lieutenant Telimezh and Dazhis Athmaza are able to relieve us.”

Maia was vaguely aware that Csevet had entered the room, with his edocharei behind him, and that they were all watching this increasingly heated back-and-forth in mute, mounting horror. “Surely something can be done, some compromise found—”

“We are your nohecharei! We four alone!”

“I'm not asking for my sake, Beshelar!”

Beshelar's face was contorted with disbelief at Maia's intransigence, and must not have looked much different from Maia's own. He could not have guessed what either of them might have said next, but he was spared from having to find out by a courier bursting into the room. “Your Serenity—Dazhis Athmaza,” the man gasped.

“No.” The word left Cala's lips as though the air had been punched from his lungs. The pen tumbled from Maia's fingers. Even Beshelar forgot his soldier's composure, hands moving to his mouth before he remembered himself and dropped them stiffly to his sides. 

“Serenity, we will see to the rites,” said Csevet quietly, already moving toward the foolscap and pen upon the desk. “Following the passing of a nohecharis, there are certain procedures that only the Archprelate may arrange. If we send a message by pnuematic now, then—”

“But,” the courier interjected, looking back and forth between them as though unsure what to do next. “Dazhis Athmaza isn't dead. He's just...gone.”

It took a minute for his words to penetrate the grief of Maia's mind. And then he was once more left to grit his teeth in silence as the unspoken rules of the Untheileneise Court ground on around him while he sat idle and unwitting. _At least_ , he thought, _at least Telimezh thought to ask thee, instead of assuming thou wouldst not wish to ever see him again._ And then, _Art thou so awkward a ruler, that even the man who saved thy life will not approach thee with his concerns?_

“But he cannot be well-enough recovered to have left the hospital,” he blurted, to stop the swirl of his own thoughts. The room was silent in response; they were all waiting for _him_ to speak. He swallowed, then turned to Csevet and said, choosing his words with care, “We have no wish for _any_ of our nohecharei to resign, but as we have already explained once tonight, we will not compel them to serve. 

“If it is Dazhis Athmaza's wish, we will release him from our service. But not before we have thanked him directly for all he has done.” In truth, Maia could not even have said if nohecharei _were_ permitted to resign. And even if they were, he was probably committing another unpardonable blunder by announcing his intention to thank one of his subjects for serving him. 

But Telimezh's earlier declaration argued that it might be possible, and even if the lieutenant had spoken only from passion, unsupported by any imperial law or precedent, Maia had just survived one attempted coup for his reformist ways; he saw no reason to back away from continuing on with them now. 

And there was Csevet's approving glance to consider, too. “Serenity, we shall see to it,” he said, moving seamlessly back toward the desk and its waiting pen and paper. “We believe his family resides in eastern Thu-Athamar. We will begin by making inquiries to them directly.” Maia thanked him, and then was whisked away by his edocharei to be bathed and dressed for the long day ahead. 

There really was an astounding amount of work to be done in the aftermath of a coup, all of it needing to be attended to while not neglecting the regular workings of state. Maia labored late into the evening before he even began to perceive an end to it. Following a late dinner, which he gulped down in haste and without really tasting any of it, he retired to one of the little-used receiving rooms that dotted the Alcethmeret like dandelions, accompanied by his secretary, Lord Berenar and the Witnesses for the Ath'mazare, Treasury, and Parliament; Captain Orthema and a handpicked detail of guards, and his increasingly worn nohecharei. 

“What news of Dazhis?” he asked at the end of a long and demoralizing discussion of who among the lower-ranking Drazhadeise and Chavadeise retainers could be trusted and who was probably best not.

Csevet paused and moistened his lips before speaking, a gesture so uncharacteristic it sent an immediate jolt of wariness down Maia's spine. “As to that...Serenity, we believe it likely that Dazhis numbered among the conspirators.”

“Impossible,” Maia said flatly.

He waited for the others' angry outbursts at this nonsensical pronouncement, but none came. Indeed, the room felt as though it were filled with condemned men who had finally been given the dates of their executions. Maia's gaze darted from one to the other, taking it all in: Beshelar's stony silence, the tense set of Orthema's shoulders and Berenar's thin lips, Cala's red-rimmed eyes, which he had noticed earlier but put down to fatigue.

“We do not believe it,” Maia said into the face of their resistant silence. “We have never had any reason to doubt his loyalty, and—” He turned helplessly to Cala, but found no ally there. 

“Serenity,” he said. “Forgive us for not bringing our concerns to you earlier today. We did not want to believe.” 

“Believe what?” he echoed dumbly. 

Cala's ears flattened unhappily. “There was no time to consider, in the initial rush to ensure your safety, how it was that anyone was even able to breach the Alcethemeret and take both Dazhis and Telimezh unaware.”

“But—” he said and stopped. And then, because there was nothing else he could say, “But they did.”

An angry flush spread across Cala's face. “Do you think so little of us, Serenity? That we would fail to note the presence of half a dozen men within your chambers late at night? That we do not stand ready to defend you from harm at all times?” Maia swallowed, uncomfortably aware that both Cala and Beshelar had been awake for the better part of two-and-a-half days now, and more alert during that time than Maia himself.

“It makes no sense,” he said, cutting Cala off and not caring. “We have seen Telimezh's report; he said nothing that could cast suspicion on Dazhis. And Dazhis was wounded, too. No one who saw him has denied it.”

It was impossible to read Orthema's expression behind the sun mask, but long years in Setheris's care had taught him to interpret the tendons flexing in his wrists and arms. He noticed too an uneasy shifting of weight among the other guards; beside him, Beshlar's face was a careful blank. 

He was trying to work out what he needed to ask, when mercifully, Orthema spoke first.

“It is easy enough, Serenity, for a man to inflict such an injury upon himself, should he wish to do so.” Orthema paused, ears tightly cocked as if steeling himself to admit something unpleasant. “We have seen it often enough, among those cowards who wish to avoid deployment to the Evrassai Steppes."

“Just because such a thing is possible—”

“All the mazei in the Mazan'theileian have been accounted for, Serenity,” said the Witness for the Athmaz'are. “We know of none who could have cast the cantrip that night aside from Dazhis Athmaza himself.”

“But it was Dazhis who warned the Guard of my abduction!”

Lord Berenar leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That is what we are still puzzling out, Serenity. That he injured himself argues that he wished to disguise his role in this treachery, but to what end? Had the plot succeeded, it would have meant the revethvoran for all of your Serenity's nohecharei. And Dazhis surely knew he took a great risk leaving Telimezh alive, when the lieutenant might have remembered something to implicate him after he recovered.”

He shut his eyes, aware his ears had drooped almost to his shoulders and not caring that they should all see it. “But then what is to be done?” he asked.

“We have sent our most skilled interrogators to question the conspirators, your Serenity,” said the Witness for the Judiciary. “We imagine they will have more to tell us on the morrow.”

Maia thus spent another sleepless night and much of the day that followed in silent misery, alternately hoping that the Witness for the Judiciary was correct and the matter would be put to rest once and for all, and that his interrogators would discover nothing, and the question Dazhis's innocence or guilt be left forever undecided. 

But the Judiciary's inquisitors were skilled at their work, and it was not long before Sheveän and Chavar both spoke freely of their plans, each worried that other might try to disavow their own role in the scheme at the other's expense. 

But for all that Sheveän and Chavar's testimonies differed widely on the subject of their personal culpability, they agreed in all respects on Dazhis's role in the plot, as did the testimonies of their armsmen—that Dazhis was to wait until they'd had time to spirit Maia out of Cetho and then seek out the Guard bearing a tale of infiltration and attack by a dozen Evrassaien barbarians beneath the command of a powerful witch. 

Worse yet, none could offer any explanation for why Dazhis had told the Guard the truth of Maia's abduction, aside from believing it a sign of the other side's betrayal. In the end, Maia had little choice but to command that the Cetho Watch and any who could be spared from the Guard find and capture his former nohecharis.

Maia fretted that Telimezh was all the likelier to resign now that he could add failure to suspect Dazhis's treason to his list of supposed sins, and indeed it did occasion a fresh round of self-recrimination from the lieutenant. But it also left him angry and defiant, and more determined that ever to protect Maia from any and all harm, and Maia accepted his continued service with a relief that rivaled the lieutenant's own.

For its part, the Mazan'theileian moved quickly to suggest a new candidate to partner with the lieutenant. His public declarations notwithstanding, Maia had harbored private reservations about accepting Kiru Athmaza'a service. Although intellectually he could make no argument for why a woman should not serve in that position, a small part of him did wonder if there was not something to Beshelar's remark, and whether he could ever be as much at ease with her in the room as he was with his other nohecharei. But contrary to these doubts, he had grown accustomed to her presence with a speed that surprised even him.

He found her steady presence as comforting as Cala's, perhaps even more so these days, when Cala's bloodshot eyes and the thickness in his voice were a constant reminder that he could not look to the maza for comfort, and of how unfair of him it had been that he ever done so previously. 

He sighed into the warming air. It was almost daybreak, and he felt he had nothing to gain by pretending to sleep any longer. He meant to bid Kiru good morning, but what came out instead was, “Must it be the revethvoran?”

Kiru paused a moment before responding. “It can be nothing other, Serenity. Dazhis broke an oath, the highest a maza may ever hope to swear. It is what the Adremaza must command.”

He twisted beneath the sheets, like a mulish child fretting against his parents. “So everyone says. But we do not even know why he did it!”

“Neither do we, Serenity. We never found occasion to doubt his dedication or desire to serve the throne.”

“You knew him?” Maia swallowed, both desperate to hear and frightened of what Kiru might tell him. _We were passed over,_ she had said the day the Adremaza recommended her to his service. 

“Yes, Serenity. From the time he entered the Mazan'theileian, though we never studied alongside one another. And it was we who tended to him in the hospital.”

“And even then, he gave no reason why—”

The bedcurtains were still drawn against the night air, but he imagined he heard a soft rustle of fabric as Kiru shook her head. “No. Although...he was troubled, and made feverish by something beyond simply the wound he had suffered.”

The silence stretched on, and Maia thought that all Kiru had to say to him on the matter, and so was surprised when she spoke again. “It is not our place to speak, and truly we know that we should not, but...for all that we can never pardon Dazhis's deeds, in the end he did spare Your Serenity's life. And in so doing, the lives of Your Serenity's nohecharei as well.”

Maia could find no answer to her, but lay abed awhile more, stomach twisting painfully.

The sensation grew steadily worse throughout the day, so that he found it difficult to pay attention to any of the matters his court put before him. _Is this what it is to be emperor?_ he thought miserably. _To order men's deaths when thou hast no stomach for it thyself, because another expects it of thee? And if so, perhaps the throne is a prize thou shouldst have surrendered to Sheveän after all, for_ she _would be suited to it._ The thought sickened him further. 

His thoughts spun on, and with them the sense of dis-ease, so that by the day's conclusion he had no need to fabricate an excuse for dismissing all his household from his presence save his nohecharei. He collapsed into bed anxious and shivering, and dreamed of his father's charred face and Captain Orthema saying over and over, “Osmer Nelar was never formally charged with treason—or with anything else.”

When he woke, he was glad to find it was still the middle of the night. A soft word brought Kiru to his side. She conveyed his wish to Telimezh and soon, his secretary and his first nohecharei had assembled in the antechamber. There he explained to them what he meant to do, knowing all the while what he asked of them, and that whatever their own feelings on the matter, none of them would refuse. _To have others do what they would not, merely because thou asks it—this, too, is what it means to be emperor._ He hoped he would prove worthy of the loyalty they showed him. 

Mercifully, less than a week passed before Csevet's couriers found the workhouse where Dazhis, starving and feverish, hid, a task on which, Maia noted with black amusement, the combined efforts of the Untheileneise Guard and Cetho Watch had yet to make any progress. 

It was another night before Csevet could arrange for a space in a small and ramshackle temple to Csethio on the outskirts of the city where they could meet, and the pretext under which Maia might travel there without the pomp and fanfare of an official imperial visit. Those days saw him witness the closest his nohecharei had ever come to outright defiance of his wishes; he was half-convinced, as they approached, that they intended to kill Dazhis on sight, regardless of the assurances he'd extracted that they would not. 

Dazhis was weeping as they entered the nave, horrible wracking sobs that left him nearly convulsed on the floor. His nohecharei stood tensely, two to either side of him, ready at a moment's notice to leap to his defense. But it was clear to Maia, if no one else, that Dazhis had given up and no longer posed him any harm, and that despite all Csevet's carefully worded assurances to the contrary, that Dazhis suspected Maia had summoned him here as a prelude to the revethvoran or to suffer something even worse. 

Maia had spent the week playing it carefully out in his head, how this time he would act the emperor they all seemed to wish for—imperious and remote. But all his carefully tended composure crumbled at the first sight of Dazhis. “Why? Why did you do it?” 

Dazhis glared at him with bloodshot eyes. As Maia watched him fight to regain his breath, he realized that he was really asking two questions: _Why did you betray me?_ and _Why didn't you follow through with it?_

Dazhis chose to answer the second. “They promised,” he rasped. “When I told them the others would never agree to it. They promised me they wouldn't be harmed.”

Maia realized he was gasping for breath almost as hard as was Dazhis, and fought to get himself back under control. He thought back to Chavar, and his assurances of abdication and a life of monastic contemplation, and how he had not believed it even then, and cursed Dazhis for a fool. “What made you doubt?” he asked, barely a whisper.

Dazhis's face twisted, and it was another moment before he could make himself understood through a fresh fit of sobbing. “I heard them, through the door after they took you away, the Princess's armsman, asking whether he should kill—” His eyes darted to Telimezh, but he could not say his name. “And the other telling him to keep quiet; that their orders were not to touch any of the nohecharei until I after I joined the Princess and the Lord Chancellor in Cetho.” 

“And so you laid waste to all their plans, to save _us_?” The disgust in Beshelar's voice could have melted iron; it was only too clear that Dazhis's remorse was a gift he scorned.

Dazhis did not take his eyes from Maia's face as he answered. “It is _you_ who are the danger to the Ethuveraz, not them!” he spat, and Maia took an involuntary step back at the informal 'you' and all it implied. Only now did he see how much he had hoped, that it _had_ had something to do with him, that he had figured somehow into Dazhis's calculations, that in the end Dazhis had not thought his rule wholly unworthy. 

A moment later he was furious, a blinding white rage to complement his confusion and heartsickness. It took an act of will he nearly did not have to back himself away from that cliff. But he had not struggled over the course of these long weeks only to have Dazhis's fear and contempt undo his resolve to act as he saw fit. 

“The Corazhas, the Parliament, and the Adremaza have all called for you to commit revethvoran,” he said, and watched the flush of Dazhis's weeping drain from his face.

“They say the choice was made the instant you broke your oath. They are able to say it knowing that the choices you made after saved our life—and those of our nohecharei—before Sheveän's treason could be realized, but we cannot. 

“You are a coward and a fool, and we think we will go to our grave unable to forgive you.” It was all he could do to continue using the formal, but he was determined to show Dazhis the anger of the Ethuverazhid Zhas, nothing more. “But we will not have your cowardice turn us into a murderer to satisfy the demands of others, when we do not wholly agree with them.” His voice was rising, hardening; it was the voice of an emperor whom even Dazhis might have respected. 

“But then what is to be done with me?” Dazhis whispered.

“The same as you believed would be done with us,” Maia told him, and was relieved beyond measure to see that he did not hear his own death in Maia's words. _Spend the rest of your days in silence, with the remainder of your life to consider the choices you made_ , Maia thought. _We have suffered enough for your actions, and now we are done with you._ Having finished what he came to do, Maia turned and walked out of the temple and back into his kingdom.

**Author's Note:**

> For Extrapenguin, who asked, "Dazhis fesses up before the coup attempt. What happens?" This is how and why I think he did it, and what happened next.


End file.
